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Is That Pirated Software?
underpar writes "According to this ZDNet.com article, Microsoft 'has launched a pilot program in which some visitors to the main Windows download page are being asked to let the software maker check to see whether their copy of the operating system is licensed.' The check is not required, but after the desired 20,000 users go through the program they might change their tune."
Who are these people? Being a freelance computer tech (and knowing many others in my trade), I know exactly who these folks are. They're the ones who got a particularly good deal when buying a home-made computer from someone's garage... or, more likely, those who had an OEM copy installed with their retail computer, messed it up dreadfully, and whoever worked on it decided to forego using the "restore disks" (which are often missing, since many people have no idea what they're for, and which are generally dreadfully broken in the first place) and install a questionable copy of XP. I've faced this dillema myself, before, but I always opt to try to fix the existing installation, or inform the customer that their decision to visit every gambling and porn site under the sun necessitates that they buy a new copy of Windows.
These are the folks who can often be genuinely uncertain whether their copy of Windows is legitimate. These are the folks who click "OK" on everything anyway. The question is what they have to gain from this knowledge, and, more importantly, what Microsoft has to gain.
What information can Microsoft harvest, exactly? They surely know how widespread these practices are; after all, they practically encourage them with their cutthroat OEM policies. Also, they insist (at least according to the article) that they won't treat those with an unlicensed copy any differently from those with a legitimate one. My guess, among other things, is they'll start harvesting illegitimate license codes (like they have in the past... FCKGW anyone?) and perhaps block them a year in advance.
So they'll probably use this to keep pirated windows boxes from downloading windows updates... so what? You can have microsoft send you a CD with the latest patches on it for free. Granted, it takes a little longer than a 1-20 minute download, but it's still a viable solution for those of you with the urge to use pirated software.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
then what's the point....What's scary is that someday they'll lock the pirates out of patches...Leads to two scenarios -
:)
1.) Increase of unpatched, demon, zombie PCs
or
2.) Linux Migration!
You could probably piss a hell off a lot of people, who as TFA states "namely, people who bought a computer that they thought had a legitimate copy of Windows." You're gonna force them into buying a new copy?
And that still doesn't get around ordering a patch cd in the mail.
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
If the user is running a VLK edition of Windows with a CD-Key other than the FCKGW one - or with the 640 PID, depending one how stringent they're being - how do Microsoft know that it's a priated copy?
OK, so activation cracked copies will be fairly easy to ID, but if you've got a corporate copy (which most pirated releases are anyway) and a valid key there's no way to tell, surely.
I wonder what happens if you visit with Firefox. They are obviously using an ActiveX control for this, so will FF users pass right by or be denied access to downloads? Windows Update won't work anyway, but will this affect manually downloads?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I like playing games. Given the choice I'd play them on a free operating system, but until that's a reality I'll cough up for Windows every few years. I'm not even convinced that it's overpriced, to be honest. I can buy XP Home for the price of two games. As far as my gaming habit goes, it's a minor expense.
Bug-ridden, yeah, but (non-rhetorical question approaching) are there any viable alternatives?
This is one of those glorious ideas that look great on paper and have absolutely no effect on piracy.
There was a time when Microsoft began blocking SP1 downloads for WinXP for users using one of a list of very common keys. I suppose it may have prevented a few people from downloading the service pack, but the vast majority of users who were using these keys either found a hack to change their key to something randomly generated, or simply downloaded the service pack elsewhere.
Go back a little further and try to remember the furore over the required online or phone registration of new WinXP installs. For the poeple who do not desire to pay for their operating system, this was a similar inconvenience. Easily circumvented, but an annoyance to legitimate users.
The music industry implements protection so weak that it can be circumvented by pressing the 'shift' key, but breaks CDs for legitimate users. Nobody who wants an illegal track or two is deterred by this. If they can't get the music off the CD they'll just go to a P2P network and download it from there.
Time and time again we see media providers and software companies implement these rediculous attempts to spite casual pirates. The only people they ever end up bothering are there own customers, and in the rare case there is a backlash and their sales are hurt by their own arrogance, who do they blame? Pirates, of course.
I want the fire back.
Why did they release the XP "corporate" verstion which allows installation of XP without teh required online registration?
It's apparently worked quite well to protect Citrix and MS Terminal Server from being used.
I believe MS likes having everyone use Windows, whether it's paid for or not.
What are people going to do, if they can't get Windows pirated? Buy it? Nope.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I honestly wonder if it's even possible to effectively determine whether or not a user is using a pirated copy of Windows. Unlike an online game or something where no two users can share a CD-Key and be online at the same time, Windows is just on operating system, and can't always have internet access. Also, many OEM and corporate PCs share CD Keys, and there's really no way Microsoft can tell how many PCs the software is licensend on. Besides, the time Microsoft gets their copy protection working 100% is the time many people decide weather to spend $300 on Windows or $0 on Linux.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's one thing for them to block service packs and require a serial number, but it's quite another thing for them to do the whole product activation and mandatory serial checking approach. People by nature feel that they own their software or should. The biggest problem that copyright holders face is that the more they pull, the more they are going against human nature. Eventually, the result will be either people losing interest or aggressively "stealing software" and/or supporting political action that is antagonistic to corporate software interests.
If Microsoft were smart, they'd keep working the OEM channels, cut the cost of a new copy of Windows XP Home to $100 with none of the product activation junk and charge $50 per retail upgrade. If Microsoft is so worried about people pirating its products, they should extend steep discounts to their customers who buy off the shelf copies. Microsoft could make good money charging only $50 for Home and $100 for Pro upgrades for Windows.
When in doubt, cut your profit margin down and try to sell more copies of your product. Since digital goods are so cheap to fabricate physical copies of, there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't experiment with much cheaper retail prices for a version of Windows. Hell, they might find that if they stop heckling their legitimate users and cut prices that the desktop Linux threat all but goes away.
Let's face it, what incentive right now would there be for people to choose desktop linux for small business and home use if Windows had a no hassle licensing system and was sold that cheap?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Like many nerds with a job, I upgrade components in my PC frequently. I have a legitimate retail copy of WinXP Pro. I have a home-built PC, which sits happily next to my Powerbook G4. A couple months ago, I upgraded the motherboard and RAM, and took the opportunity to reinstall WinXP (as I typically need to about once a year). When I called the Windows activation department in Bangalore, I learned something new...
Lady: I can help you with activation. First I need to ask you a couple questions.
Me: Ok.
Lady: How many computers is this copy of Windows XP installed on.
Me: One.
Lady: Why are you reinstalling Windows?
Me: I bought a new computer case. (I just said this off the top of my head, not thinking anything of it.)
Lady: Well, I'm sorry. You can only activate Windows XP on one machine.
Me: It is one machine. I've transferred all the same parts to a new case.
Lady: You can't do that.
In the end, I had to call back and make up another reason. This was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. The woman insisted that I could not change the case it's in, but I could change EVERYTHING ELSE. She kept telling me to read the license agreement.
The bottom line is that MS will slowly but surely reign in the piracy. This is just a first step. The Windows activation is pretty lame, because if you have a legit number you can just keep calling and (re)installing all over.
Number one reason why everyone in my family runs 2k or below?
XP's magical disappearing configuration system. After all, if you've never needed it yet, it won't show it to you so you don't know you've got it. Its bad enough having to troubleshoot something over the phone, without knowing the 50 different paths to get there depending whether the person has chosen to disable the hiding functionality, disable the "new" control panel (note that in the new control panel, there are icons that you cannot reach from the groups it displays, most notably 3rd party extensions, but a few microsoft things too), etc.
Its a pain in the ass in Office too. I have to deal with people asking me how to do things that are right on the format menu..... if they've used them once. Of course, until they use them once, they have no idea Word can even do it.
"You don't have any right too someone else's property just because you think it's too expensive."
If using it doesn't deprive anyone of anything, why not? Where in whatever moral code you follow does it say that copying is evil? Or that the statutory monopoly known as "copyright" afforded by the government is a basic human right?
People still haven't figured out what the technological revolution is all about. Data isn't a thing (property) like a gemstone you can lock in a vault or guard with your shotgun.
Reminds me of a statistic I read yesterday: that if the nation of Burundi was required to buy licenses for each copy of Windows in use, they would have to give 67 straight months of the country's entire GDP to Microsoft.
So you spent more on SuSe Pro then an OEM copy of Windows XP Home would have run you.
OEM Copy.
Way to compare apples and lugnuts.
This would be the same MS who gives deep discounts to the OEMS, discounts that you and me cannot buy on our own?
Also, to the grandparent post:
The fact that they still have the 50BN (as opposed to spending it or, say, offering dividends) does not prove that they are good at ripping people off. All it proves is that they have some fiscal responsibility and can hold onto cash.
I think I need a new sig here.
I run a part time business selling computers (approx. 10 a week) and it's a rare event that I sell a computer to a private user with an operating system.
People do not enjoy using pirated copies. Especially when it's a pain in the ass or a worry, like getting service packs, etc. They do so because for them to buy legit copies of Windows would simply be too damn expensive. The cheapest I can do WinXP Home OEM edition for is around $150 Canadian, which is simply too much. Even $100 Canadian would be a stretch, frankly. Your average Joe would be satisfied buying an OS if it didn't exceed ~$75 Canadian. I'm not basing this off any direct studies, just my personal observations, but if WinXP was priced around there, I think I would sell FAR more copies.
Different demographics are all obviously different too. As a computer engineering student, I'd be surprised if any significant number of my colleagues were using legit copies of WinXP. Those who are, are usually doing so because it came with their laptops. MS will give us absurd discounts on Visual Studio, etc., but we're left to spend the big bucks on an OS?
Sure, analyzing the pricing on an OS may be a bit naive of me. But different demographics are willing to spend drastically different amounts of money on an operating system. When someone wants to buy a ~$400 system, it's hard to tell them that the OS will cost $150. Then I might turn around and build a system for someone else that costs 10x as much and they don't think twice to get me to toss it on there.
Here's an idea that's a real long shot. Suppose a motherboard manufacturer were to design a motherboard which is targeted for low end, budget users. It is somehow crippled so that it can't be used with the more expensive hardware, but it also comes with a rebate form or some sort of discount on WinXP Home. It would be a modified OS to run only on the motherboard it was shipped with or intended for use with, and the motherboard is set up so that it would be adequate for budget users but not for high end enthusiasts. It would encourage the low end users to purchase Windows instead of pirating it, and allow Microsoft to keep higher prices for the rest of the market. I see the potential flaws in my little scheme, but it's something to think about.
The site says my fake volume license key is legit. The people they're catching are the ones that got screwed by shady computer stores that slapped a computer together with an unlicensed copy of XP and give the customer a burned CD. If it makes anyone feel better I have 5 NFR copies of XP Pro that have never been used.
So basically, the object of windows is not to be a good operating system, but a "just good *enough*" operating system.
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
Linux is unusable
Funny thing, that... See, I have an ATI All In Wonder Radeon. I wanted to make my computer be my vcr, dvd player, etc (what can I say, I got divorced, got out with my computer, and that was it for entertainment). So, I used the software that came with it, and got something moderately functional. Not great, but functional. Then I decided I wanted a remote control for it all.
Now, before I tell you what happened, let me tell you about me: BS in CS, working on home computers for about 20 years (started on Apple ][ and Vic-20, worked my way up Commodore's line, right on through the Amiga, before it died and I had to replace it with clone stuff). I write code. Play games. Build networks, pcs, and do general repair/maintenance (but no soldering, I don't have a steady enough hand for that). I grok the computer in a way that people around me just don't quite understand. I do things, and they just wonder how I knew to do it.
So, what happened with the remote? I got a lot of functionality working. Able to start file playback, already had working vcr functionality, so was going good. Then ... then I tried to make the power button on the remote into a toggle for putting the monitor into standby mode. Monitor in standby? Wake it up. Monitor awake? Put it in standby.
The damned remote control software stumped me. I spent over two weeks trying to make it do just that. I could set it so the power button would either always wake up the monitor, or always put it to sleep, but could never make it toggle. I decided I'd had enough. Bought an ATI TV Wonder, installed Linux, MythTV, and lirc, an had a working setup. Oh, and the time? About two weeks, including all tweaking. That was almost two years ago, and I haven't rebooted Windows since then.
In fact, I thought I'd deleted it off of all partitions, and recently found a copy hidden on that computer. Forgot it was there. Anyway, Linux is unusable? People can't make it do what they want? Maybe they can't, but I sure as hell can. And do. So please, don't call it unusable.It's only unusable for people who are even worse than my mom at computers (mind you, she still doesn't really understand the idea of folders even).
Since she uses Linux every time she goes online, I have to conclude that, if you believe Linux is unusable, you desparately need to check into computer rehab, and get some better skills.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
1. They have a right to deny service to the folks who have pirated copies.
2. If you have a legitimate copy you have nothing to worry about.
3. If you have a pirated copy and have nothing against Microsoft go buy a legal one NOW.
4. If you have a pirated copy and are against Microsoft, then STOP USING WINDOWS
1. But they also deny service to folks with legit copies.
2. If you have a legit copy, you may be stuck with something that won't install and you can't return to the store.
3. If you have a pirated XP Full Pro Corp, you have nothing to worry about, it will install and the service packs will update.
4. If you don't have a pirated copy of windows, you might be SOL until you get a pirated copy.
There also comes the question of site licensing. A college I used to work for has a site license with many Microsoft products. Any student, staff or faculty member is allowed to have a copy of any Microsoft product (except for server products (Server 2003, Exchange, etc...)) burned for them LEGALLY. We kept this hush-hush from the students, but I have obtained Visual Studio .NET, XP Pro and Office XP legally this way. I'm wondering if, since there is a site license in place and the serial can be used by many people, would serial harvesting have an impact on users who have site licenses?
Exactly!!!
I do lots of custom programming and consulting. I have a few machines that I often use to replicate a client's environment. I have legal copies of Windows XP and Server 2003 for this, but I scrub them after each project. Of course, I can activate each one only twice, then I have to call Microsoft and tell them what I'm doing and get hassled like I'm putting off the mob for 20 minutes. That is really starting to piss me off, because as I activate them more and more I get hasseled more and more. I've had to do it over ten times now, and it is really irritating.
On a side note, for the few clients I have running Linux I don't even need seperate test machines, because I know that no matter what else I have running on my development server, the few things that I work on for my client will behave the same once its on their machine!
/rant
I run SUSE 9.0 Personal edition for Work and internet.
Somehow the old saying; Windows is for fun, UNIX is for getting things done....seems more relevant today than ever.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
This hypocritical attempt to maximize profits is a bunch of bullshit and will ultimately result in Microsoft's downfall once they piss off the wrong entity. They may have done so already.
I read in the latest issue of Variety that Microsoft had a $1.1 billion loss last year. It was in an article on the 50 largest companies in the entertainment industry. I don't know if that was a misprint or not. I thought Microsoft was a perpetual motion money machine.
to the mods who are too young to have memorized the entire Hayes AT command set, this post is +1 informative, please mod it appopriately.
to the mods that ever used an amber monitor on a single-floppy PC XT or PC AT, you gotta admit this guy summarized the old days pretty well- give him +1 insightful.
To everyone else: why don't we ever talk about CP/M anymore these days?
I ended up getting a cracked copy written over the original master floppy. Cracked, so the copy protection wouldn't fire, but not pirated... I only had the one copy and it was on the original media.
not to nitpick, but if it was cracked, then by definition it was pirated, regardless of your legality or license.... at least by today's standards (see DMCA)
not disagreeing with your post, just pointing out what a different world we live in now.
Does a user really have to press "Accept" button to allow M4 to check if their key is valid and allow to download?
How do we know M$ cant Autodetect user serial?Whether or not the user wants , dont you think M$ could hav a mechanism to find if the Windows the user is using is pirated or not when the user accesses the Microsoft.com site ( or even when jus logged into the ineternet!).
Couldnt there be a back door deployed my M$ to do this?
Why does yahoo do this
Parent poster wrote:
"The problem is that most hackers are rabid about Linux because it's phenonmentally powerful if you code a bit."
So are BSD, MacOS, and (bet you saw this one coming) Windows. Most hackers are rabid about Linux because they got more than they were promised. They weren't promised anything. They didn't pay anything, and they got a whole lot.
I have a few friends that graduated with me from college with varying technical degrees, including CS, Math, Engineering, and Physics (what can I say, I'm a geek and hang out with geeks). Some close friends ended up at Microsoft. And even though they run Windows whatever at work, they still chose vi or emacs as their editor, bash and other shells, and awk and sed in their code along with their C#, C++, and Perl. One of them bought a shiny new laptop with his recent bonus and reused his old desktop (stuffing Linux on it) as a web-connected file server/bridge. He recently told me how he saved one of his machines at work by using a Knoppix CD! Just imagine an MS employee booting Linux, at work, to fix their Windows machine!
GNU isn't just about linux advocacy, it's a philosophical movement centered around the idea that by keeping code "free of ownership" we can advance society. From another perspective, the GPL is a way of saying, "I don't own this code. You don't own this code. The public owns this code. You can't build something from this code and distribute it without the code."
This is quite diametrically opposed to the philosophy that: "I work hard to create a software product of intrinsic value. It is my property. I sell you a license to use that property."
Many people who wrote utilities and published them under the GPL ported their utilities to Windows, BSD, Linux, etc. They also make pure Windows apps under the GPL, and others port these. Basically, it's not the Linux OS that makes for a great hacking experience, it's the fact that it comes with a bunch of GNU tools. But then there's CygWin and other GNU toolsets for Windows and BSD and MacOS.
The reason that Linux may be a threat to Microsoft is that there are a growing number of developers who got hooked on Linux because the development tools came with the OS, and they didn't want to pay MS (or Borland) for tools which promote Windows. Of course, there are also a great many people who still write free software for Windows (using DJGPP or other MSVC++) simply because Windows is the largest target audience of normal users, and they use it. But if the developers market is changing because of the availability of high quality tools, then Microsoft will react. Maybe too late, but it's in the cards.
Indeed, Microsoft already has done some reacting. 57,000 employees, including some of my best friends know that their job is on the line if Microsoft goes under, and from what my friends tell me, working at Microsoft is better than all of their previous jobs. Their reaction: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/ Is this too little too late, or is it the beginning?
(getting back to original topic of activation, and tying back into the philosophy of property)
When I ask my friends about the activation stuff, they tell me that nobody who has a brain expects it to deter piracy, but they have to do something to attempt to prevent it from happening. DRM is an equal joke, but it is another way to protect information as property. Both of these measures do something very specific: they make it so that in order to copy the "property", you need to intentionally remove its "protection". This follows a fundamental principle that property is only owned by someone to the extent that they can defend it.
One more response to the parent poster:
"For average folks, it's [Linux] just another alternative."
In order for it to be an alternative for me, it needs to do everything that I need it to do. I need it to run the software I use (includes Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop and t
I've developed on both platforms and find that they both have advantages and disadvantages...
/proc) makes Linux a much nicer system. I can slap together apps to accomplish simple tasks in a line or two. Sure, there's cygwin, but despite being an impressive hack, cygwin is slow, often flaky, and almost all software is vastly less well-tested on cygwin than on a Linux environment.
/sbin/ifup in your favorite text editor and tell the script to hand "-w" instead of "-1" to dhclient.
Same here, and same here, though I think Linux's advantages for a hacker vastly outweigh the drawbacks.
Why do you consider Linux to be a 'mind boggling' better platform for hackers?
* If I have a problem/missing feature and it's irritating me enough, I'm guaranteed the option of just fixing it myself.
* The POSIX toolset, large set of development tools and compilers available on a typical system, and easy hooks into the OS (like
* If I don't like the way my system functions, I change it. For example, Fedora's standard configuration currently stops any attempts to re-obtain a DHCP address if any attempt to get an address fails. I often work on flaky networks, and this drives me bananas -- I want the thing to keep trying to re-obtain an IP address even if an attempt fails. You can just open up
* Better (non-POSIX) tools. Windows doesn't have a "file" command any more than it has a "locate" command.
* Better remote access options. Using Windows remotely is a painful chore that *can* be done using VNC or the like. Using Linux remotely (stick with CLI programs, which is quite feasible) is a pleasure.
* Choice in what packages to use. As it happens, I don't like GNOME *or* KDE *or* Explorer very much. They all slap large icons on the screen, eat screen space, expect me to launch applications with my mouse instead of my keyboard, cover up my pretty desktop, and none of them (well, maybe KDE) use "viewports" instead of "virtual desktops" any more, where a window can lap over from one "viewport" to another. Easy fix -- just slap something else in. I use xbindkeys+gkrellm+sawfish, and have exactly the environment I want.
* Sandboxing capabilities. It's a bitch to, say, sandbox an unknown binary (or a server, to keep a server compromise from compromising the whole system) on Windows. It's much more reasonable on Linux.
* No bullshit. If I've identified a problem and I don't want to fix it myself, I file a bug report. With, say, Microsoft, I go to some low level tech support person, and maybe after a series of escallated issues, they admit that there's a bug. Maybe. And they don't call it a "bug", because they don't make products with "bugs". They call it an "issue". Their product doesn't have a bug -- *I* have an "issue". Then maybe somewhere the "issue" wends its way to the cloistered-away developers and perhaps, after some period of time in the mysterious black box, eventually gets released. In the open source world, if I know what I'm doing, I fire off a "there's a problem, here's what's breaking" message straight to the developer (and can do so to the guy that wrote the very line of code that's broken). I dump my bug into a bug tracker (heck, wishlist features go into the "bug tracker"). As the developers work on the thing and fix it, I have full access to every thing they've done, just as much as any developer does, and when the problem gets fixed, I know about it immediately.
* If I want to do something, there's probably a ton of actively-maintained and free libraries already out there that do just about everything I want (and if they *become* unmaintained, someone else can easily take up the torch -- I don't have to worry about reliance on some random third party). For example, two days ago I was working on a JPEG artifact removal idea. I wanted to do image processing (encoding, decoding, manipulation) and use a neural network. Two apt-cache searches and an apt-get download later, I
May we never see th